Clementine “Tish” Rivers and Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt have been friends for the rest of their lives and began a romantic relationship after they grew up. In the early 1970s, they struggled to find an apartment to live in because many New York owners refused to rent the flats of the blacks. They finally find a place to stay in a warehouse that is being transformed into a complex of apartments.
Levy, the Jewish owner, agrees to rent an apartment at a reasonable price because he enjoys seeing couples in love, regardless of their race. That night, Tish is harassed by a man while shopping at a shop frequented mostly by white men. When the aggression begins, Fonny threw the man out of the shop. A nearby white policeman, Officer Bell, sees the incident and tries to arrest Fonny but leaves him alone when the store owner takes his defense and calls Bell a racist.
Fonny is arrested later for violating a woman named Victoria Rogers. Because of the fact that it was virtually impossible to have traveled from the place of the alleged act to the home during the time of rape and arrest, the case against him is a strong one because of Bell’s testimony that he had seen him running away from the crime scene, and then the woman identifies her as her rapist from a group of other men identified.